Pictures inside Excel comments

In a previous tip of the day, I showed you how to create shaped comments in Excel but today I’m going to go one step further and create pictures inside the comment.

As you might expect, start off in Excel and add a comment to a cell. Right-click the cell and choose Show comment and then click the border of the comment to select it. Choose Format, Comment and, from the Colors & Lines tab's Color dropdown list choose Fill Effects and then the Picture tab and click Select Picture.

Find a picture to add to your comment from those in your My Pictures folder, enable the Lock Picture Aspect Ratio checkbox and click OK twice. You’ll now have the image inside your comment.

Depending on the image that you have used you may want to change the format of the text, for example coloring it a different color and sizing it large enough so that it can be easily seen.

Any shape Excel Comments

I like to use comments in my Excel worksheets but sometimes the square yellow boxes just don’t do it for me.

Luckily with a little bit of imagination and skill, I can change the shape of my comment boxes.

Here's how to do it yourself:

Add a comment to your worksheet and click the cell that contains the comment, right-click and choose Edit Comment and then click on the border of the comment so you have it selected.

Now, from the Drawing toolbar click the Draw button and choose the Change AutoShape option in the menu. You can select from all sorts of shapes including stars and banners and flowchart symbols.

When you’re done just click outside the comment and the change will be created for you. Neat stuff? I think so.